Aitken denies licence to 'front' operation
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TC Aitken has refused an 0-licence application from Ord Transport after ruling that it was a front operation By Roger Brown TRAFFIC COMMISSIONER (TC) for Scotland Joan Aitken (pictured) has refused an 0-licence application from Ord Transport, describing the operator as a front for revoked business Highland Car Crushers.
The TC considered an application for two vehicles from Victoria Fraser, the director of the Dingwall-based firm, during a November public inquiry (PI) in Inverness.
Back in July, Aitken revoked the 0-licence of Black Isle-based scrap car haulier Highland Car Crushers for nine vehicles and nine trailers, and disqualified its directors — Victoria's husband Hunter Fraser and his father James — for five years.
This ruling followed an incident in June 2011 when vehicle batteries, which were filled with acid, fell from a truck operated by Highland Car Crushers onto the Smithton roundabout on the A96 Inverness to Elgin trunk road. The company had also failed to declare Hunter's previous conviction for drink-driving.
The Ord Transport PI examined Victoria's proposed role as sole director and shareholder. Hunter and Victoria had formed Ord Transport in April and applied for an 0-licence for the firm in May, although no mention of this had been made at the previous Highland Car Crushers PI in July. Hunter subsequently transferred his shares in Ord Transport to his wife.
Evidence was produced at the PI to show that Victoria, 27, had never previously had to manage employees.
She had worked in a call centre, been an office employee and had responsibilities as a family carer and mother of three young children, but had no background experience in transport.
TC Aitken noted these were valuable roles but not ones that brought "expertise and hands-on knowledge to a business engaged in timber haulage, scrap metal movement and general haulage".
The TC added: "Given such inexperience it could be highly dangerous to let Mrs Fraser be transport manager on an operation such as this for the CPC [she had studied for] could be a fig leaf of competence, not an actual reflection of practical understanding.
"I am sorry to be so harsh towards her but the context of this case requires it.
"I acknowledge she will have some awareness of the business simply from having to be with her husband."
Victoria told the TC that Ord Transport was not a fronting operation, and said the company had been formed so that timber trucks could be operated separately to other Highland Car Crushers' work.
However, in her written decision, the TC said she believed the application was a case of fronting and designed to let the Fraser family continue in haulage.
She added: "This is fronting. I am in no doubt that this arrangement, the creation of Ord Transport, and all the arrangements that have been put in place surrounding it and continuing are to get around my orders against Highland Car Crushers and Messrs Fraser."
Stop fronting TC Aitken said that to grant the Ord licence would "undermine at a stroke" the whole impact of her revocation decision in the Highland Car Crushers case and her disqualification orders.